Pathway to Japanese Literature

The house was utterly dark.
It always had good sunlight, yet.
Why was it so dark?

That was Akutagawa Ryūnosuke’s house.
I began visiting that house two or three years after the master’s suicide, yet it remained dark as though still steeped in his anguish.
I always cursed that darkness, despised death, and hated the master.

I never knew Akutagawa Ryūnosuke in life.
I came to this house because when we started a coterie magazine, one of our members was Akutagawa’s nephew Kuzumaki Yoshitoshi, and he and I handled the editing, using the Akutagawa residence as our editorial office.
Kuzumaki lodged at the Akutagawa residence and was primarily the one who handled matters like the publication of Akutagawa’s Complete Works on behalf of the family.

Kuzumaki’s room was an eight-tatami-mat room on the second floor.
In that sunlit room, even now, I remember only the sunlight of this room—it makes me recall the house as if there had never been any rainy or cloudy days there, a house perpetually bathed in light.
And yet, why was it such a dark house?

In this room lay a blue carpet spread wall-to-wall.
This was the blue cloth used for the covers of Akutagawa’s Complete Works; if my memory serves correctly, they had made the carpet from the remnants of that cloth, and thus it seemed to be something that had not existed during the deceased master’s lifetime.
It was a gloomy carpet.
It was always bathed in sunlight, yet.

There was a large bed.
Kuzumaki would take Calmotin every night to sleep in this bed, but since the standard dose had no effect, he consumed massive amounts; this unhealthiness had turned his facial skin sallow and covered it in fine wrinkles.

In this room, it was said that Akutagawa Ryūnosuke had been discovered just before his death after turning on the gas valve, and that very gas valve still remained beneath the staggered shelves of the alcove.

In this room, I can’t count how many nights I spent working through till dawn.
Since he was dissatisfied with just publishing a book using the collected manuscripts, Kuzumaki said, “Let’s translate something.”
So most of the all-nighters here were for translation work, but I disliked translation—then he’d press, “Write a novel instead.”
At the time, I wasn’t the sort to write novels so easily—because I had nothing I truly should write, no words I needed to write.
I translated thirty or forty pages in a single night.
Without consulting a dictionary, I skipped over parts I didn’t understand—so of course it was fast, clear and fluent—but Kuzumaki never knew that.

Yet there was Kuzumaki, writing a novel beside me.
This was nowhere near the speed of my translations.
Unlike his slow-writing uncle, he would churn out over a hundred pages of fiction in a single night, like a waterwheel.
This speed was unprecedented in my experience, though he never published a single one.

I truly hated going to this room—it was so dark.
I used to call it "Death’s House," but ah—must I sit in that gloomy room again? I would think.
Even my legs grew heavy as I walked.
I cursed.
I hated Akutagawa Ryūnosuke.
But I knew.
The darkness was not, of course, because of the master’s suicide.
It wasn’t because of the carpet’s color, nor was it Kuzumaki’s fault.
In short, it wasn’t that the Akutagawa household was dark.
My age was dark.
My youth was dark.

Youth is dark.

People say youths of this wartime period are living through an age of empty youth, but I believe all youth is inherently empty.
I think it was not only I who was dark, but my friends as well.
There is passion and hope and vitality with no way to release them.
Yet there is no focus to any of it.

I wrote a novel.
They say it's living for literature.
But I had no words I was compelled to write truthfully, no issues I had to address, no way of life or passion that demanded expression.
There was only a passion chasing hollow fame, and consequently, a soul mired in ceaseless despair and defeat.

Three from our circle back then had already died by that time.
The first was Nemoto.
He had once sent Kuzumaki a postcard cutting ties.
The night before, our group had gathered at Nemoto's apartment.
The apartment was in Kudanshita, close to the Athenée Français in Misakichō where we congregated, so we let ourselves into his vacant room—having the caretaker unlock the door—to discuss magazine matters, I believe.
As it was cold, we took Nemoto's futon from the closet and spread it out, with Kuzumaki wrapping himself in it.
That's when Nemoto returned.
The severance postcard appeared to have been written right after we left.

The postcard stated, “You should understand the reason for severing ties,” but Kuzumaki said he didn’t understand, and I too, even now, do not understand.
Was entering without permission wrong? Was spreading out the futon wrong?
Nemoto had tuberculosis.
He was a government official.
He was a gloomy, earnest man who always trudged along with a weak cough. He never laughed and hardly ever initiated conversations.
And then, Nemoto died soon after.

What was Nemoto angry about, and why?
I did not want to know that.
There was no need to know—was there?
People were simply hysterical anyway.
Anger always targets those closest to us—and oh!—the sorrow of anger becomes nothing less than humanity’s very image of grief itself?
Nemoto—trudging along with feeble coughs perpetually spilling forth and head perpetually bowed—must have harbored tremendous anger within his chest all along.
What this anger was directed toward—even Nemoto himself likely never knew.
Only this much remains certain: it was never aimed at Kuzumaki.
That could only have been Nemoto’s youth.

The second was Wakita.
He was a student at Mita.
He was disabled.
A disabled person so utterly devoid of bitterness was a rarity.
When we tried to form a theater troupe, he said with a laugh, "The only role I can play is Notre Dame."
He was bright and refreshing.
His funeral was held at a distant temple in Setagaya or somewhere, and while I wandered lost along country roads, circling aimlessly, the service ended, and I encountered members of our coterie walking back from the temple.
A bright and clear day.
A peaceful country road.
I thought it was actually for the best that I hadn’t found the temple.
I scratched my head and felt as if I could see Wakita ascending to heaven with a bitter smile, thinking, "He really died."
He was saying goodbye.
He was saying, "Take care."
He was waving his Mita school cap.
Goodbye, Wakita.

During the war, on the morning after a bombing raid, when trains had stopped running and I was walking to Tokyo, an air raid alarm sounded in Ōmori. As I stood there peering out from a house entrance while deliberating, someone called out to me. He was disabled. He appeared about the same age Wakita had been when he died. On his pale face—the pallor characteristic of disabled people—rested a tranquil smile.

“It’s just a single plane, they say.”

The smile seemed to add, “No need to worry.”

“Please feel free to use our air-raid shelter.”

Wakita had lived in Kiharayama, Ōmori.
Needless to say, I recalled him.
In the great gratitude with which warm hearts and gentle souls had filled my heart, I hurried down the road as if fleeing—for a time in a burning state of mind—in a dreamlike state.

The third was Nakajima Sue.

To him, I alone seemed to be his only friend.
He appeared not to have formed close relationships with anyone else.
For a young man pursuing literature, the house where Akutagawa Ryūnosuke had committed suicide would hardly have been an unusual place.
He, however, seemed to possess a temperament indifferent to such interests and untouched by atmospheric elements—indeed, it was certain he had visited that house only once.

He often attempted suicide and failed. He probably had hereditary syphilis, I think—periodically going into psychotic episodes and attempting suicide each time. The rope from hanging would snap and he’d be found unconscious; he’d swallow more than a lethal dose of medicine and survive—each time, a suicide note would come to me. Finally, he went mad and died of encephalitis.

I thought that Nakajima’s suicide might, so to speak, have been a form of resistance against me. He was contending with me. But with my shadow—rather than there being any truth in me, he seemed to project something higher and deeper onto me and contend with me. After his death, only grimy French books were left. His impressions written here and there in those books—within them emerge words that bear no relation to the French texts themselves. “Ango is no enigma.” “Ango fears death.” “Yet he is aware that knowledge does not untie knots—it creates them.” “Suffering is not an appetite, Ango.” “Ango.”

What could this last one possibly mean?
I don't understand.
He had once shown up at my place dangling Cocteau's Potomak.

“Have you read this book?”

I nodded.
Because Kuzumaki was a devoted reader of Cocteau, I had borrowed his collection and read it.

“I burst out laughing.”
“You’re the type who can’t even vomit bile, aren’t you?”
“No matter what you eat, nothing affects you.”
“But you yourself have no poison either.”
“You’re no viper, are you?”

His smile looked poignant.
I could not understand his words.
However, just as he contemplated me—because I did not acknowledge the need to contemplate myself—I could only ignore him in silence.

When he failed at suicide, revived, regained his health, and appeared before me, I found myself involuntarily enraged.

“Suicide? Such a tacky delusion of superiority.”
“Hey—don’t make me laugh.”

His lonely face remains unforgettable to this day.

“I know.”
“But it’s no use.”
“I”

But I was no good.
Would that have been his periodic mental derangement?
It seemed that wasn’t the only meaning.
He had feared someone like me; there had been no need to fight.
What part of himself had he been projecting onto me?
Yet I believe it was true that with each deranged episode, he raced toward death in resistance against me.
Ango cannot die.
At any rate, it meant I could die.

When I visited his deathbed—a room in a psychiatric hospital—he had his family leave and called only me to his bedside, saying, "Die."
"If you keep living, I can't die completely," he said.
"You can't commit suicide."
"When I die, I'll summon you for sure."
"I'll summon you without fail."
His deranged eyes gleamed fiercely with murderous intent.
The intensity was terrifying.
His mind was erupting.
I felt scorching lava might engulf me at any moment.
"Well?"
"You're scared now, aren't you?"
"You are afraid," he continued desperately shouting.

Why had he gone that far? He should not have gone that far. I was indeed afraid. I was overwhelmed and could not help but feel destined to be killed by him. However, that shout of “You must be scared now” somehow gave me composure. I reflexively answered haughtily. “Of course it is.” And with all my strength, I glared at him.

His face suddenly showed intense disappointment. And he fell silent.

Yet I had feared the ghost of his death’s moment.
However, no ghost ever came.
His heart was gentle.
His friendship toward me overflowed with boundless love.
Looking back, he must have conceived even that bizarrely archaic cursed mechanism of “summoning me” from his deathbed—such was his desperate wish to crush me and deliver a lifelong painful blow without fail.
He was that sort of man.
There existed no sincere passion capable of striking as a true ghost.
He had mastered the farce of attempting to strike through such mechanisms.
Though his ardent wish was staked on that farce, though his erupting spirit and passion were staked upon it—he himself knew it remained a farce.
He had always known this sorrowfully.
His suicide too had been precisely such a farce.
At life’s end, his ghost—rather than visiting me—must have vainly cast a single ashen word into the void.
“The farce has ended!”
—so it proclaimed.
The farce had been his entire life.

★

There was no period like youth that bore death's shadow, that pressed back-to-back with death. For human joys and sorrows too, there was but one director behind the stage: death. People must inevitably die. Nothing exerted a more decisive force upon our existence than this fact; indeed, I could not help but think that this alone might be the sole source of power.

Because youth was a time of power, it was simultaneously a time closely intertwined with death's fierceness. The labyrinth of life was difficult to unravel. It was a labyrinth of the soul, but that labyrinth too was something death had given us. Contradictions, tangled threads—was not life, whose womb and homeland were death, something to be cherished, a nostalgic brocade?

My youth was dark.
I had no choice but to think about death, but the act of thinking directly about death should not have been what darkened my youth.
Because youth itself is death’s shadow.

I was burning with ambition.
My body was healthy.
My wildness was always something that troubled the friends.
Because the friends were generally sickly and frail.

Kuzumaki was tubercular.
He showed me the X-ray of his chest, propping his cheek on his hand and gazing at it. "Well?"
“Wait, or rather…” he said.
He chuckled like an adult.
And then Kuzumaki said, “You’re hale and hearty, aren’t you.”

I was perfectly healthy.
However, the healthier the body and soul, the more profoundly they are controlled by death.

I was utterly exhausted by ambition.

That ambition amounted to nothing but a desire to become famous.
Yet I was merely impatient for fame—I possessed no words worth speaking, no truth needing declaration even were I to tear open my chest regarding what I should or must write.
To ambition corresponded blind confidence.
Thus to this lack of necessary words corresponded a despair that did naught but watch an endless plummet.

That disappointment always made me feel a "desire to escape".
I admired dropouts.
The attic philosopher.
Mr. Bonbon, the philosopher and proprietor of a restaurant in the depths of a Parisian back alley.
A university student who falls in love with dolls.
I thought I wanted to go to Paris.
My mother too had intended to send me to Paris; however, I harbored a dark premonition—though I couldn’t say why—of hanging myself in some Parisian attic, and being unable to escape that premonition, I never found the resolve to actively propose going to Paris myself.
When I reflect upon it, this longing for dropouts might well be the product of a healthy mind.
Because it is the reverse side of ambition.

On one such day, concealing it from my friends, my mother, and everyone else, I secretly set out to seek employment.

At a certain café in Kanda, I was seeking to become the manager.
I had forgotten the café’s name but resolved myself after seeing the newspaper advertisement.
Because it seemed the most trivial profession in everyone’s eyes, I resolved myself.

I distinctly remember that day.
It was May 5, 1930.
I boarded the train.
The ticket's date stamps were lined up as 5, 5, 5—that's why I can't forget it.

Because I didn't drink alcohol, I had never entered places like cafés.
I believe there had been two or three times when I was invited into small bars, but this large café was my first experience; however, since it was morning, not a single person could be seen.
He was an owner around fifty years old—the very embodiment of gloom, wickedness, and greed.
He had a snake-like quality about him, crawling along the ground and slithering closer, his narrow eyes harboring a sinister gleam.
He spoke to me in a low, hoarse voice that was hard to catch while watching my eyes.

“When I say ‘manager,’ I don’t mean the manager of this café,” he said.
“For the time being I’m managing this café, but since my real goal is hotel management, eventually I’ll become a hotel manager—a hotel with its own bar attached, that’s my ideal,” he said.

When he asked, “Do you have any interest in tourism?” and I carelessly answered that I did, he said, “Then tell me your aspirations.”
Since I’d never even considered it, I was utterly stumped; with no alternative, I resorted to confession.

I had no intention of rising to become a hotel manager.
I desired to be a café manager.
Wearing a tuxedo or something (Mr. Bonbon would indeed be dressed in formal attire year-round), amidst the clamor of drunks, beyond what might be pine or fir potted plants or such, I maintained an utterly solemn expression on my foolish face, never neglecting my vigilance.
No matter who saw me, I was more foolish than anyone else.
Such an utterly dull and foolish-looking face was an inborn trait that not everyone could possess, and it suited me perfectly.
I had come there with secretly harbored confidence, and there was no small amount of ambition in that.
What, then, was this ambition?

“I’ve grown fond of this profession where I can’t say it hurts when my tooth aches.”
“You work at a company, don’t you?”
“The section chief calls me in and barks, ‘You’ve worn that sour face since morning! Got some grievance? Out with it!’”
“Then I murmur, ‘It’s my toothache,’ in a voice faint as a mosquito’s whine.”
“This rotten molar’s my chronic curse—the pain brings tears.”
“No patience for suffering, so my face turns tear-stained.”
“But here’s the thing.”
“In a café, even if I weep behind these potted plants, no customer’ll scowl like some section chief over my grimace.”
“Forever overlooked, dismissed—the fool of fools—I paste on a painless mask while mourning silently.”
“Hence my natural gift.”
“However my tooth throbs, standing beyond these café plants lets me stifle agony more mindlessly than chlorophyll.”

He merely glanced up with bulging eyes.
It was a coldness like water, showing no emotion.
"What do you suppose would make the shop prosper?"

I was a complete failure.
I had stubbornly clung only to the atmospheric ambitions connecting me to this profession—hadn’t slept a wink all night—drowning myself in a toothache philosophy that convinced my own logic.
The truth was, I hadn’t considered the secret to making the shop prosper.
I noticed the oversight.
What he sought from me wasn’t my enduring toothaches, but rather the secret to making the shop prosper—that much was certain.

“Gathering only beautiful women.”
“It’s a given.”

And so, having no choice, I answered with great bravado.
The reason I acted boastfully was for the dignity of truth, but he nodded coldly,

“That’s a given.”

I was flustered and utterly flushed with heat.
Having realized my unsuitability for the role, I asked him to return my resume.
He handed back the resume as though this were only natural, then explained that what he sought was someone fit to become a hotel manager—that being a café manager wasn’t even worth considering—and added that hotel management posed significant challenges.
This neither seemed to chastise my rashness nor perhaps was anything more than an accidental glimpse into his own grand aspirations.
Had he achieved his aim?
I felt certain he’d found spectacular success, yet for some time afterward I remained haunted by this man’s phantom presence.
It was because he’d maintained that watery impassivity until the end, never once directing contempt or admonishment toward me.
In short, because I myself stood aghast at—and mourned—my own recklessness: this self-indulgent farce of solitary wrestling.

Now, as for what my state of mind had been in secretly pursuing such employment without telling family or friends, it could be summed up in one word: dark and anguished. It was a lament that this was the only way I could live. There existed none of that flippant humor masquerading as dropout nonchalance.

At that moment when I saw the owner with his gloomy, malevolent, ruthless countenance, that I shuddered so darkly at his features was because I had glimpsed the shadow of reality's darkness attempting to push me down.

Youth despairs.
For there is a great hope.
The hope of youth is boundless, transforming itself into a king or a genius with no distinction between dream and reality, but behind the hope of adolescence lies a bounded self.
I was aware of my own limitations, and the foundation of hope was lost.

This too is a story from that time.
I saw a circus at the Kudan festival with Nakajima.
During a bareback trick riding act, as four or five girls whirled around on horseback, one of them fell from her horse.
The horse’s leg struck her face.
That was all it took.
The girl's face was stained with fresh blood.
An astonishing amount of fresh blood.
A male worker rushed over and, without any pretense of care, grabbed her hand and yanked her up.
Since the horse’s trick riding kept whirling around, this rough handling seemed almost natural.
The girl was pulled upright and stood, staggering only slightly before dashing behind the curtain, but her blood-covered face drew pained gasps from the crowd.
Yet the faces of the troupe members showed not concern, but anger at her inexperience.
On the girl’s face too, the anguish of self-reproach for her inadequacy held a severity surpassing the pain of her injury.

Heartlessness too was pure in that moment.
She fell from the horse.
The horse's leg touched her face.
Truly, it was an utterly insignificant moment.
Because it was merely an insignificant instant—like a passing shadow—where injuries were unthinkable, the fresh blood gushing across her entire face seemed nothing more than a simple red color.

She was not a beautiful girl.
Yet the terror of anguish from self-reproach beneath that fresh blood froze my heart with chilling admiration.
Pulled upright, she stood staggering before dashing away; encircled by the troupe members' furious eyes from every direction—I became intoxicated by absolute beauty.

We left the hut and went around to its rear side.
Through a gap in what appeared to be the dressing room tent’s entrance, I saw someone who looked like the troupe leader emerge—and with that, my resolve suddenly crystallized.
I approached him, bowed, and asked, “Are you the troupe leader?” To which he replied, “I am.”

I stammered out my request—to let me join the troupe. What I could handle were scripts, overall composition, and direction, though I hastily added that I wouldn’t mind being used for other miscellaneous tasks either.

My appearance must have differed from that of men who typically made such appeals. Back then, I was fashionably Westernized and well-groomed. Rather than seeming puzzled, he glared at me with ferocity instead. Then—as if muttering “What now?”—he gave two or three curt nods, offered no reply, and strode away.

I was in an utterly absurd state of mind, as if bewitched by a fox. Rather, discomfort welled up within me. Why I thought I wanted to join the circus troupe—yet I had no intention of joining at all. I had simply wanted to try saying such a thing.

It wasn’t as if the blood-covered girl’s face had made me do that. I was somewhat moved. However, it was not a profound emotion. It was merely that I had consciously elevated it to a profound emotion.

Moreover, to compound my troubles, I believe there was even a theatricality meant to be shown to Nakajima.
At the very least, once I began speaking, I became acutely aware of Nakajima as an audience member.

Yet ultimately, there must have been youth's inherent darkness—that inexorable sorrow too.

"You embody nihilism."

Nakajima's murmur was poignant.
He was caring for me.
His face looked lonely.
It was a face distorted by self-mockery, pale as a shadow, as though he himself were the one who had dared to commit such folly.

That was self-mockery, I now think.

He never spoke about women in front of me, nor even when addressing other members.
He never showed any sign of turning toward any beautiful woman.

However, after his death, I heard unexpected stories from his sister, his close friends, and others.
He was constantly chasing women.
Whenever he stayed at an inn, he would proposition the maids, sneak into their quarters at night—they say he always succeeded.
He had an aristocratic bearing.
They say he fell for a café waitress—wrapping his entire face in bandages, binding his arm with bandages hung from his chest, swathing one leg in bandages to feign a limp—and leaning on a cane, went out daily to court her.

“Lechery runs in our blood.”

At the wake, his sister murmured.
It was a chillingly self-mocking laugh, yet identical to her brother's own self-mockery.
At that moment, I had been recalling his self-mocking face from that day.
The one who dared to commit folly was he himself.
He was a man who could not laugh at people.
He was a loner of the type who could think only of himself.

★

It was during the war that Hirano Ken once asked me this: whether I had experienced any ideological wavering from leftist movements during my youth. At that time, I answered quite breezily, "I did not experience any."

If I were to flatly declare that I hadn’t been affected, it would indeed be precisely that sort of thing. Naturally, those who are in their youth cannot remain indifferent to the trends of the times. All such concerns are varieties of this wavering; however, to speak of any single instance of wavering inherently requires addressing all contemporary concerns of the era—isolating one alone risks distortion.

Because I declared too casually that I hadn't experienced any wavering, Hirano Ken wore a bitter smile—but this was due to his question having been unreasonable.
Did, didn't—I could say either, and whichever I chose to state so definitively would end up being precisely that sort of thing.

The period I am now recollecting was already the final phase of wavering.
When I visited Kuzumaki, they would say things like Nakano Shigeharu had come yesterday or Kubokawa Tsurujiro had just left—though I never crossed paths with anyone—but there was also a time when I sat on a still-warm zabuton cushion after an underground movement activist had come seeking funds and just departed.
There were times when Kuzumaki was detained too, and I stayed up all night alone in the masterless room; and there was also that astonishing endurance of Takahashi Koichi, who reportedly lurked outside the police station all night gazing at the detention cell window; and another time when he came to my house late at night—seeing light leaking from my room and my figure studying inside, he stood outside waiting for me to finish, then only approached after recognizing that dawn had broken and I was about to sleep.

I was the one who had begged to join the circus troupe, but my desperation no longer erupted into commotion through throwing myself into communism.
I knew about my own desires.
because I knew my own selfishness—the kind that could not be a communist without self-deception.

My youth was dark.
It was a darkness without any foundation upon which one might stake oneself.
Yet I had utterly ceased imagining such foundations—whether through fantasies of joining a circus troupe or embracing communism.

At any rate, I had staked myself unequivocally upon humanity itself.

I detested communism.
For its adherents believed in their own absoluteness—their eternal truth.

Our lives are brief.
Though our past stretches through long aeons，our future extends beyond them still.
To impose absolute systems upon infinite futures within our fleeting generation—is this not blasphemy against time’s endless evolution?
Let each era strive its utmost，cherish its existence，and pass life’s baton—that suffices.

Politics and social systems are by nature things that should recognize themselves as always temporary—a stage in evolution to be replaced by something better—and politics need only consist of practical measures to repair and correct real-world flaws.
Politics is infinite correction.

If each of these corrections consistently constitutes the justice of its era, that suffices; and the one indispensable foundation required for politics to be justice is nothing other than the establishment of each individual’s freedom.

Politics that believes only in its own absoluteness and an unchanging eternity betrays freedom and rebels against evolution.

I detest revolution—the means of force.
Even if one resorts to revolution, the only thing that must be realized is the establishment of freedom.

What I needed was not politics, but first and foremost to be a free man myself.

However, this was not the first time I had thought this way about politics; indeed, from long before politics became an issue for me, I must have already been thinking along these lines.
But the human heart was not moved by theory alone.
Contradiction.
I think my wavering toward communism was perhaps not, for the most part, about the adherents' "courageous resolve."
Heroism was something that youth both rationally and blindly scorned even as they yearned for it.
I used to avidly read Napoleon at that time.
The pitifully astonished hollowness of the words he spoke until moments before his death on that island of captivity; in this world, words so utterly distant—no, words themselves are nothing but the idiotic foolishness of a farce.
The youth in my heart had nights where it laughed uproariously while sighing, nights when tears even welled up.
Whether literature, which finds life only in words, could laugh at Napoleon through those words, or whether Napoleon could laugh at literature—I could not tell.

I think the wavering of youth lies not in theory, but rather in actual courage.
I had no courage.
I had no confidence.
I could see nothing but darkness ahead.

Around that time, there was a trip to Enoshima or somewhere with the alumni association of the Athénée Français.
At that time, I was spoken to in an oddly familiar manner by a young salaryman I didn’t know.
He would chase only me around, always speak to me, cling to me like a shadow, and torment me; but when there was no one around, he suddenly said:

“How many—no, how many dozens—of young ladies’ lovers do you have?”

I was dumbfounded.
He was serious, yet composed.

“You are surrounded by young ladies who admire you.”
“I was always watching from a distance.”
“I felt both lonely and envious, yet I was also intoxicated by the refreshing clarity of seeing my dreams manifest in your reality.”
“You are a king.”
“Blessed with beauty, talent, and power.”

His words were quite lengthy. He didn’t want to be my friend, it turned out—he had merely wanted an opportunity to say a single word to me. That he had been sadly intoxicated, seeing his own dreams realized within my reality.

And then, having finished saying only the words he had prepared to tell me, he left with an oddly brisk finality.
And he never attempted to approach me again.

He was an utterly absurd young man.

Far from having lovers among young ladies, I didn't even have friends.
What on earth had he been dreaming of?
From what aspect of my circumstances could such an unexpected judgment have arisen? I couldn't think of a single thing.

But one twilight, when I had gone out to buy French books at Hakusuisha with Nakajima, I was called out to by a stranger once more.
This young man seemed to be over thirty.
He had long desired to become acquainted with me, so it was said.

“Just fifteen minutes.”

He emphasized the fifteen minutes as he spoke.
He demanded that I grant him fifteen minutes to talk with himself.
We entered a café.

What he spoke about was solely his own state of mind—the apathy of one who could be nothing but a bystander; who could neither become a Marxist nor an Epicurean; and the poignancy of a lowly salaryman’s toilsome life struggles that had seeped into his very marrow.

He was a small man.
And while speaking about the tragedy of the lowly salaryman, the apathy of bystanders, and nihilism, he nonetheless reclined arrogantly in his chair, adopting a swaggering attitude as though he feared nothing at all.
There was a wry smile playing at the corners of his mouth—an arrogant smirk that seemed ready to stab even me.

“You have such confidence.”
“Such brimming confidence.”
“You always walk as if treading firmly upon the earth.”
“Every time I saw you, I always felt this jumble of repulsion and a certain nostalgia, hatred and something akin to poignancy.”

While saying these flattering words to me, he reclined even more arrogantly, his wry smile deepening into something that seemed to mock me.
He abruptly changed the subject,

“I will be leaving Japan soon.”
“Off to China I go.”
“Can one ever truly part with anything?”

He leisurely stood up, bid us farewell, and haughtily disappeared.

Far from overflowing confidence—no, not even a shred of confidence—I had no foundation to live on.
My stepping foot was always floating in mid-air.
I was tormented by the sadness and frustration of being nothing more than a farce performer on life’s stage.
It was a truly peculiar emptiness.
They probably weren't mocking me.
The wry smile at the corners of Mr. Arrogant’s lips—he must have known no other way to express his affection.

Kuzumaki Yoshitoshi too was considered by others to appear the happiest of men.
He was a gentle nobleman and Akutagawa Ryūnosuke's nephew.
People seemed to detect in him such blissful melancholy—surrounded by many beauties and deliberating which Iris to choose—as if sniffing it out.
Yet the man himself lay hopelessly lovesick over some young lady, tossing through sleepless nights while gulping Calmotin only to roll from his bed.

And how many nights did Kuzumaki and I argue and stay up in that second-floor room of Akutagawa’s house? I would translate in a huff, seething with anger. He would write novels. Both of us worked at a furious pace. I was always dark.

I remember that house.
A house always sunlit yet dark.
They say the war reduced even that house to gratifying ashes, but my dark house will not turn to ash.
Within it my youth remains confined.
A youth that was nothing but darkness.
Even in recollection, I only grow darker.